Matt Bradburn is the founder of People Collective and now leads growth across Scede and People Collective, helping organisations implement people and talent approaches that make their businesses stronger and sustainable.
With his expertise as both a founder and a people leader, we were excited to talk to Matt about the changes he is observing in the people function. We discussed self-reflection, generational shifts in attitudes to work and why businesses are nothing without their people.
Cecily Motley: Can you start by giving us an overview of your career so far?
Matt Bradburn: I started out working in recruitment. I became increasingly interested in what great hires went on to do within the companies we worked with, so I gradually moved into people roles at startups, including at Qubit, Lyst and finally Peakon, which is now part of Workday. After that, I set up The People Collective. I wanted to create a commercially minded, people-centric approach to building great outcomes for businesses. You often hear that “a business is nothing without its people,” and it’s true. If you don’t get the people stuff right, commercial outcomes are harder to achieve. That’s the aim of The People Collective: not creating great places to work, but creating exceptional outcomes for businesses.
CM: If your career were a best-selling novel what would the title be?
MB: Probably Master of None, or Jack of All Trades. I've learned a lot by never closing myself off to a particular field - be that recruitment, sales, marketing, finance.
CM: What is the startup or people story you use at dinner parties to break the ice?
MB: At one company I worked with, the founder hit a receptionist in the face with a door in a fight over a meeting room, which led to our immediate eviction from the building.
CM: Wow... What is your biggest management success?
MB: I don't consider myself a great manager. I’m not very good at staying with the details - big picture thinking comes far more easily to me. So my biggest management success has been picking the right people around me to do a good job of managing others.
CM: How did you come to that realisation?
MB: I was always perfectly good at giving people autonomy and supporting their career development but there was a moment when my co-founder had left and the team was growing, and I had to take on a lot more management responsibility. I struggled with that. I asked the team for feedback and then it was just a matter of replacing myself in that role.
CM: What is your slam dunk interview question and why?
MB: I figured out a few years ago that I have probably done around 10,000 phone interviews in the course of my career, between about 2008 and 2018. And for first round interviews, I asked the same questions of every person I spoke to, regardless of the role.
After all that, I don’t believe in slam dunk questions. There is no universal grading system for people. Rather than the questions themselves, I have found that it’s the combination of questions that matters. The questions I ask are geared towards understanding people’s behaviours more than their skills. I want to find out about their assessment of themselves, what makes them tick; I want to know about their confidence in some situations and humility in others, why they might be more curious about some things and less curious about others.
CM: What is one mistake that you’ve made in the people space?
MB: Letting entitlement go unchecked, particularly in those who are in their first jobs out of university. In one of my people leader roles, I received complaints like “why is the SONOS system playing my Spotify and messing up my algorithm.” When I graduated, I started working at Safe Store - selling pens on the phone from a windowless room in a car park. It was hard and I learned a lot. It seems like fewer graduates today are doing those jobs where you build resilience, learn how to talk to people and learn how to just get on with it.
CM: What is the biggest change you’ve observed in the people function over the last three years?
MB: Change itself is the change. The people function has undergone huge amounts of stress: it was called upon during COVID, it is relied upon to scale businesses and to make layoffs. It is a very burnt-out function right now, and a lot of people are leaving it as a result.
CM: And what do you think is going to be the trend for the next three years?
MB: The types of people that are coming into the people function are increasingly commercially driven. CEOs and Founders are realising that people are the backbone of their business, but they need people leaders who can sit at executive board level. If they can’t find them they're going to start hiring in from other functions, which is already happening.
CM: What would you pay good money to know about your peers and competitors?
MB: Everything about their business. How do they monetise? What's their business model?
CM: Do you think AI is going to take your job?
MB: No, but I think folks in the people space who use it might.
CM: What is the AI prompt that you use most regularly?
MB: I like Superhuman. I feed it my own content and ask it to write emails in my style.
CM: What is your life hack?
MB: I have trained my body so it loves getting up at 4:30am. This means I get tons of work done before anyone else is even awake, which is great. I also probably know more about the amenities and opening hours of every WeWork in London than anyone I’ve ever met.
Cecily Motley: What should we read or watch right now and why?
MB: One podcast and one book. The Modern People Leader podcast by Daniel Huerta is excellent, and Built for People: Transform Your Employee Experience Using Product Management Principles by Jessica Zwaan.